


To His Hungers, Unappeased.

by neocortex hunters (doubleinfinity)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Attempted Murder, Blow Jobs, Character Study, Choking, Complicated Relationships, Forced Orgasm, Lots of conversations, M/M, Making Out, Manipulation, Multiple Orgasms, Murder, On the Run, Oral Sex, Rimming, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 11:24:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14212095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubleinfinity/pseuds/neocortex%20hunters
Summary: They've garnered some sort of routine.  They exist in the same house; when Hannibal hunts, Will watches. He is content to live like this. But Hannibal's appetite ever-expands, and he's starting to act erratic on his kills.  He's starting to make mistakes that scare Will.Takes place.... Sooometime. Somewhere.  Essentially.  After everything.





	To His Hungers, Unappeased.

_01/01. epicene, and still boyish._

On most of the occasions that Hannibal put on his murder suit, Will found himself a few paces behind the older, a solitary flank with a jawline that killed in its own capacity.

 _He_ was usually dressed in his everyday clothing. A smaller god made of curls and flannel, touched by no blood, and cautious enough to avoid leaving anything behind. He didn’t carry Hannibal’s knife in his pocket, nor did he aid in the clean-up afterwards. He knew he was merely there to act a second pair of eyes, esoterically looming from the perimeter.

Somebody with the aptitude to witness Hannibal’s work.

Somebody to arch his spine and glint through the darkness, wearing his skin as though it were an expensive suit bought for him by an important person.

As Hannibal stalks through the dark of the night, Will follows languidly behind, hands in the pockets of his jeans. He’s up to his viscera in thoughts, gaze dragging inattentively along the concrete as he walks.

“Would you wish to learn?”

The question catches Will by surprise, jolting him from his thoughts. He halts in place to see that Hannibal has turned towards him, the males’ predatorily curious eyes flicking up the length of his body. Will isn’t wearing a full-bodied vinyl ensemble like Hannibal is; hasn’t used a knife improperly in months. His mouth forms a questioning circle. His shoulders roll back. “Learn to kill, you mean?”

“Well,” Hannibal responds shortly, cocking his head. “I can’t have you _just_ looking pretty forever.”

He studies Will’s reaction, so the younger tries to give none. Hannibal is less of a human, more of a data-collection automaton. The man rarely emits emotions unless he’s attempting to gain a response. His words tend towards unimpassioned, his features evenly stoic. Will is still learning how to read the microexpressions on Hannibal’s face, but he’s not even certain that _those_ aren’t calculated. He certainly understands human emotion, but Will is unconvinced that the man actually feels them for himself.

“And?” Will asks, removing his hands from his pockets. “Did you have a particular person in mind?”

Hannibal turns, a look of meaning sustained on Will until his neck is forced to follow his legs. The alley through the surrounding brick-patterned apartments is brief in length: a few sets of footsteps clopping from their well-heeled shoes takes them out of it. Tufts of grass poke persistently through the cracks in the pavement until the ground finally yields to dirt. Hannibal’s car is parked at the end of this cutoff and across the private road, shrouded a safe distance away from the targeted home.

Under the beam of an orange-tinted streetlight, Will swallows nervously at Hannibal’s appearance. They’re in such a public area and there’s still blood on the plastic of his suit. There’s a reason why Hannibal usually takes care of all this at the scene itself. The hour of night can only conceal so much.

But suddenly he remembers that he doesn’t _care_ what happens to Hannibal. To either of them. He’s content to observe whatever befalls.

“Are you joining me, Will?”

The sound of the car unlocking with a beep sends Will hastily crossing the street, where he swiftly slips into the passenger’s side. Hannibal settles next to him and they drive off towards the older’s home.

Per usual, there are no voices on the ride back. He’d be dead before he admitted it, but the quiet simmer of Hannibal immediately after a kill is far too frightening for Will to confront head-on. He turns to his respective window and doesn’t face away until they pull into the garage.

Hannibal is still in his suit when they reach his parlor. Will attempts to act like this isn’t bizarre; like it isn’t startlingly out of character for Hannibal to not only drag a mess, but an _incriminating_ mess, into his vehicle and household.

By the time they get to the foyer in the more private areas of the house, Hannibal is giving Will a look of such hunger that the male puts a foot back, certain that Hannibal is going to advance upon him and crush a vinyl fist around his neck. He is still wearing the suit, after all.

He holds his ground, matching the gaze. But with all the empathy in the world, Will would never be capable of mirroring the voraciousness with which Hannibal radiates when he _does_ start manifesting emotion. It’s as though he’s constantly deflecting his inward sensations, suppressing them beneath his skin, for moments like these when the entire surge is let free.

Hannibal parts his lips, a quiet amusement shaping the lines of his mouth. “Did you not find me reckless tonight?” he tests, noticing each precise softening that takes place on Will’s face. “Or was there purpose in you failing to warn me of my actions?”

A dark curl clings to Will’s forehead as he permits a curious gaze. He is right, of course- it began with the killing itself. Hannibal let the victim scream for too long, and now her blood has gotten far enough around the country to be a problem.

“You’re not a child, Hannibal,” he returns, “Or are you asking something of me?”

With a barely-there nod, Hannibal lifts his elbows slightly, producing a minor absence between his arms and sides. “Would you mind?” he asks, a faintly amiable tone rolling through the words.

Even though it seems unbearably intimate, Will guardedly steps to Hannibal’s front and reaches for his collar. He pulls the flimsy white zipper down, shedding the killer of his bloodied suit until he’s left standing in his navy-blue cotton cocoon. Hannibal’s eyes watch from above as Will slips down to the lowest point of the fabric, then bunches it into his arms as soon as the older steps out of it.

Distracted by the awkward friction of the slightly-wet plastic against his arms, Will maintains his closeness, trying to peer through the smugness of Hannibal’s controlled expression. “First comes complicity, then comes killing?” His facetiousness brightens the other’s fashioned expression, so apparently genuine in shift that Will feels embarrassed.

“I’m exhilarated by my own carelessness,” he insists, voice absent of all the inflections one needs to convince another. “That’s all.”

But that’s not all. His pupils are blown wider; Will can feel the race of a pulse through the air. Hannibal is desperately aroused. Will has never stayed long enough after a slaughter to watch the inward, sterile calmness transform into this state.

“You placed a heavy reliance on me,” Will speaks out, stepping back as he lists the facts, “Made me your keeper, and didn’t tell me. And now you are enthralled by the fact that I didn’t hold your reigns.” He curls his arms around the ensemble, wearing it like a muff. “What excites you more? Her blood on me? Or the fact that I don’t care if you’re caught?”

Hannibal considers for a minute, his jaw angled down but eyes unflinching from their target on Will’s face. “That you were willing to be covered in her blood, given that we would both be caught.”

The younger’s eyes flicker down to the blood that now covers his own clothing. He disappears into his thoughts but then resurfaces with a new look on his face. “May I go home?” Will asks, the mere act of diverting the other’s statement an act of defiance.

“Of course, Will,” Hannibal answers, his irises a vacant swirl of provocation.

Will breathes in harshly, a huff coming out angry in the base of his mouth. He sucks in his cheeks to conceal it, breathing out through his nose. He’s trapped. He knows it. Dryly, “you won’t kill my family?”

That amusement gleams fresh in Hannibal. “I don’t see the harm,” he dismisses. “I’m going to kill them regardless of what you do.”

Will feels the hot, incensed helplessness swell up in his abdomen, forcing his organs to strain against his ribs. However close he feels himself drift towards Hannibal- however rational their conversations become, however much ground they cover, there is no reasoning with him when he puts his true face back on. There is no way to break through. Not with force. Not with manipulation. He is caged here.

Staring back, Will can’t control the wild flare of his eyelids.

How do you win against a man that is afraid of nothing? That will take everything, and give back anything. Who is not afraid of death. Whose idea of loss is unreadable. For Hannibal, anything is enough. So there is nothing to haggle with.

“Unless…?” Will wonders aloud, the bed he’s been living in flashing through his head. Its silken pillows, blue comforters, miniscule elegant animals shaped in the bedposts. Is this truly where he’ll spend out the rest of his days? “Unless I kill them first.”

Sincere intrigue crosses Hannibal’s face. “Interesting,” he undertones, the admiration out before he can convince himself to conceal it. It looks like he’s considering dragging up a chair so as to milk this conversation before it flees. “Would you do it? Kill Molly and her child so that I would never get to them?”

“I would be… merciful,” Will shakily answers, the thought trembling him with anxiety.

“You’d be successful,” Hannibal corrects. “A shortcoming you have not yet overcome with me.” Although he has scars to show for the effort. “Can you imagine something more beautiful? Than having somebody adamant on taking your life so that others can’t?” His eyes glimmer, toying. “A pleasure I don’t possess. And one which you have, so long as you breathe.”

There was a time in which Will would have dissolved to shambles, rolling deep inside his mind and begging Hannibal until time took him under. But he’s evolved since then. He knows too much now. Even when Hannibal advances to place two hands on his shoulders, Will lets his eyes cut like bright barbs across the room, as though he has nothing left to be lost. His lip curls up, catlike and boyish. Grim.

“When you are feigning sleep,” Will says while meeting the other’s eyes, such a short number of inches away from his face that each fleck of color makes itself known. “Do you see me? In your doorway?”

Hannibal blinks and his lids stay closed a second longer than they should. Will flashes in his memory, the male’s body leaning against the doorframe, looking into his bedroom with a gleaming silver cornucopia in his hand. It’s happened on more than one occasion. “Of course,” he murmurs. “Though you never cross the threshold.”

Will breathes through his nose, lifting up his hand to pull one of Hannibal’s off him. “Family is hard to kill.”

“You would be terribly lonely,” Hannibal agrees, allowing his remaining arm to drop of its own accord. He steps back while deftly swiping the murder suit out of Will’s hands. “Please burn your clothing,” he instructs, turning towards the kitchen. “It’s too late for dinner but I’ll make you something to eat.”

-

Will sits at the table while Hannibal washes dishes, holding a steaming ceramic cup to his lips. It’s one of Hannibal’s therapy mugs, come from a set of hand-formed colors. He used to use them when his patients were in need of coffee or water.

The oatmeal that Hannibal brewed for him is just past the brink of simplicity, the sprinkled cinnamon and red dots of dried cranberries evoking a subtle pretentious piquancy.

When the sound of running water ceases and Hannibal walks over to the table with a curled fist, sifting crushed Diazepam into his tea, Will doesn’t protest. He takes a generous sip, eyelashes facing away.

But the older lingers, curving to observe Will’s features even as he shifts his body in the other direction.

After a shower, the younger’s cheeks have reddened from the steam, his skin paved over with a clean watery brush. The white of his t-shirt clings loosely to his body, only tight at the width of his biceps. Despite his efforts, Will bears a distinctly feminine edge, or, softening to his eyes and fingers and hair. It’s a slendering that he knows he could use to his advantage were his shoulders not currently bristled with anger. Hannibal appreciates beauty.

He wouldn’t have known, on his own, the expressions that seem to work on Hannibal. This information has been collected over time. All the same, he’s too exhausted to use it now. Whatever it would get him. Whyever he would want it.

Will puts the white tea down and runs a hand up his wrist, comforting himself. “Goodnight Hannibal,” he placates as he rises from the table, weary, distinctly feeling like an unresolved lover who no longer remembers what the fight was about. The cord between them is tight, but Hannibal seems to run his eyes along it as Will exits the room. A man who will take anything needs nothing. But this he takes: the image of Will, back turned to him. How easy he is to hunt. How alluring his thoughtful vulnerability is.

Hannibal smiles to himself as he picks up the younger’s plates. He puts the mugs into the overhead cabinets; the bowls get stacked on their shelves. Then he sets the cutlery away, the knife drawer one blade too empty.

-

The night is just beyond its peak; in an hour or less, the greasy morning blackness will be infused with eddies of blue, which will expand until the hemisphere achieves full sunlight. But it’s still dark now, which is why when Hannibal lifts his head from the pillow, he can’t see Will’s silhouette firmly distinguished from the shadowed doorway. Only the gleaming eyes and the silvered blade at his side give him away. He rests his skull against the pillow once more, watching for movement.

After enough time has passed for Hannibal to resume a state of half-dozing, the figure unsticks himself from the frame and enters the room, pursuing Hannibal keenly. Breathless, Hannibal sits up in bed.

“Do it, Will,” he instructs, snarling with invigoration.

Will swings onto the bed, throwing a leg around Hannibal’s chest. With the steak knife gripped by both hands, he straddles the male’s sternum, raising his elbows to wind up for the plunge into Hannibal’s neck.

This close, Hannibal can see every frustrated jitter in Will’s hands. Every bead of sweat on his forehead, every feverish blink he clings to for too long. “Do it,” he whispers, body slack.

Will raises his arms further, muscles trembling, and then drops the knife. It falls uselessly onto the bed, absorbed into Hannibal’s sheets.

Studying Will’s agonized body, Hannibal runs his eyes up and down this broken deity. “Family is hard to kill,” he reminds Will. Then his hand flashes out and he rips the knife into the air, aiming for Will’s shoulder.

Lightening-like, Will catches it midair and twists it around, thrusting it blade-first into the mattress.

“Hannibal,” he speaks, his voice so sobered that the world seems to fold outward for Hannibal, revealing the picture that’s been concealed too long from him in the tightest binding. He focuses intently on Will’s words.

The boy exhales. “Make me a suit.”

-

“Lie with me,” Hannibal requests as Will slips off the bed, holding his arms in his hands for warmth.

Will stops, looking back, his face obscured by the half-dark. “Why?” he asks exhaustedly.

The look Hannibal gives him seems fixed to scrutinize him as though that were the most ludicrous question ever uttered. “You’re distressed,” he answers simply.

A dry laugh escapes Will. “I apologize, _doctor_ , but I doubt more time with you will improve my mood.”

“Let me surprise you,” the carnivore offers.

He grasps at the air, fighting against the tear in his chest. Jaggedly, Will finds himself returning to the bed, shuffling over Hannibal to lay on his right side, shoulder to the wall. He lets his back go flat on the mattress. He doesn’t turn towards the older.

“You’re still thinking about me killing them,” Hannibal suggests, glancing at Will through the corner of his eye. “Would it alleviate some of the agony to have my word that I won’t?”

Will releases a shaky exhale, insides knotting. “You bother asking,” he emphasizes slowly, a seed of desperation sprouting from his tongue.

“Be assertive, Will” Hannibal commands, knowing he has been had.

And Will knows this game so well. Where Hannibal forces him to earn a generous gift that is not actually being given; it is just suddenly not being taken away. But all the same, it feels like the most pervasive kindness in all the world, and his chest lightens five notches. Relief and thankfulness flood through him, and in that moment, he knows that Hannibal owns him.

“Yes,” Will cracks, putting a hand against Hannibal’s knee and cupping the bone. “I don’t have to see them again. Please don’t touch them.”

Hannibal turns his head, smiling with a mocking falseness. “I promise,” he undertones, then faces the ceiling once more.

Will falls asleep faster than he can consider his own danger. But Hannibal doesn’t pick the knife off his bedside counter.

-

Will stays home alone the following night, spread out on the couch in a thin undershirt and vaguely patterned pajamas pants, the absent glow of the television transforming his skin into a shining blue monochromator. What he absorbs of Hannibal, he doesn’t know, only that what stays caught in his head must be a simplified version.

Halfway through a cop show, Hannibal heaves himself through the door, shoulders hunched and dripping with blood. He’s not wearing his suit. Every blue-and-brown threaded fiber of his clothing is exposed. His hair is free against the shedding wind.

The muddy roll of his cutting eyes meet Will, and he breathes out sharply, hastening to the couch.

“Time to leave,” he says.

Half-sitting, Will raises himself up on his elbows, drawing his feet flat against the floor. “Hannibal,” he murmurs, low. “What is happening to you?”

The older male advances, eyes hard. He stands above Will stoically, looking down like a statue that’s been rained on, eroded, and reformed. He isn’t quite who he always was. Some of the materials he’s showing are different than the original piece. His eyes are the same, but they’re almost too bright for the rest of his face.

“It’s time for us leave,” Hannibal repeats.

Will reaches up and takes both of Hannibal’s hands into his, guiding the older’s palms so that they come to cup the apples of his face. Hannibal looks down at them, as though his body has acted without his consent, and he’s intrigued at what it’s decided to do. The padding of red between Hannibal’s fingers lend him the rosy cheeks of a painted doll. His eyes burn on their way up to Hannibal’s. To maintain the gaze is a fierce resistance against his nature, but he forces it.

 _Thank you,_ he desperately thinks as he lifts slowly off the couch. Their eyes are finally severed when he presses his lips against Hannibal’s mouth, a parting meeting the older’s firm purse. But even Hannibal cannot freeze his affect towards this; he loses himself in the unthinkable fate of it all, much in the way he would lose himself in the thrill of the kill.

But even Will knows that this is deliberate. And he is _grateful_. Because if they are not in this area, they won’t be around Molly.

“I didn’t want to muddy the suit before you had a chance to wear it,” Hannibal mouths to him.

It aches when Hannibal forces Will away, retracting the hands around his jaws. He offers a threateningly tender grip around both sides of the younger’s neck before he goes, slipping the keys out of his pocket.

“Where are we going, Will?” he asks in a strange tone as he passes the car keys mid-air to the other.

-

Will’s eyes flick from the road to Hannibal, nervously checking in on the motionless passenger.

“Who did you kill?” he finally asks when there are enough miles behind them to focus in on an upcoming motel.

Hannibal watches through the window as Will pulls into the lot of a small inn, curving gracefully into a shadowed parking space. “Does it matter?” he asks, as though curious, to the window pane.

Careful thoughtfulness crosses Will’s mind. “Kind of,” he squeezes out.

“We have time, if that’s what you’re looking for.” Hannibal presents himself calmly, looking into the forest beyond the lot. “I can’t be sure, but I suspect we have time.”

“You didn’t see any cameras? No windows? No… potential check-ins from neighbors? It _was_ inside somebody’s house right?” Will blinks at the disinterested older, then sighs out exasperatedly. “God,” he manages desperately, opening the car door and forcing himself out.

“Will?” Hannibal alerts right as the other is about to shut the door, inciting Will to lean back in.

“Will you ask for one bed? Or two?” he wonders.

“Fuck, Hannibal,” Will whines to himself as he closes the door and makes his way across the pavement, car keys dangling from his hand. Hannibal’s right. It’s safer if he only asks for one, but if it’s noticed that there are two people, and he had cause to lie… things that didn’t ever matter are now marks of suspicion he has to ward against.

In the end, he stands across from the clerk in the small building and just takes what’s available. The woman gives him a queen-sized room attached to a flimsy plastic keycard. He makes his way back to the car, racking his vision along the visible room numbers as he goes.

“Okay,” he tells Hannibal when he opens the male’s door, erratically glancing behind him. “We’re right in 131, so let’s go.”

He helps the male out of the car, slipping swiftly towards their room. It’s dark enough that Hannibal’s details are difficult to discern against the midnight darkness, but Will’s eyes aren’t adjusted, and he has no idea what a night-dweller might be able to make out.

When they’re inside, Will hefts the jacket off his back and lets it land on a pale yellow couch. He presses his hands to Hannibal’s shoulders.

“Clean yourself off,” he orders nervously, voice loud but trembling. “Now.”

Hannibal looks entertained, maintaining an infuriating lack of outward autonomy. He looks ready to follow along with whatever Will advises, mentally picking at the errors but riding them through. It feels mocking. A game that Hannibal will lose just to see if Will has the skill to win.

In just his undershirt and jeans, Will turns back through the open door, slipping out of the motel room and steadily making his way back to the car. There’s a suitcase of extra clothing in the trunk, which he unlocks as his feet crunch over the dry, sandy marsh-grass that lines the parking lot. He can smell the ocean from here, a tinny overlay of salt fused with his oxygen. The car chirps and the trunk pops, but Will stops in his tracks. On an impulse, he pulls out his phone.

After a long exhale, the blue glow of the screen lights up his face. He glances up through the glare, darting his eyes around to make sure nobody has appeared, and takes slow steps as he advances towards the back of the car.

The phone responds lyrically when he taps his finger along it, a quiet code of numbers that transform into ringing. Unsteadily, he raises the phone to his ear. When the line clears, disbelief crackles from the other end.

“Will?”

“Jack,” Will hushes into the device, voice sharpened, about to plead. Before the words can frame themselves aloud, the phone is slapped from his hand, scattered onto the asphalt into body, battery, and plastic clasp. He turns around angrily, the chemical product of what fear and rage create when mixed together in a volatile solution spilling over the top of him.

“I trust you to make reasonable choices,” Hannibal states, dried blood cracking from his facial movements. A mere flicker up the cannibal’s profile shows an outpouring of poor choices.

“Then help me,” Will begs, eyes widened with distress.

Hannibal makes a large arc around him, walking up to the trunk and pulling the suitcase into his hands. He closes the compartment with a thud and circles back to Will’s side, eyes trained on the younger at all times.

“If you want that, you’re going to have to trust me,” he responds, a clearness shining in his voice. The reemergence of Hannibal’s normal tone has an insurmountable effect on him. Will’s shoulders relax; he lets himself fall into it, melting in the power of Hannibal’s absolute authority. “I _want_ to help you,” he adds, eyes folding as they search Will for a reaction. “You deserve to destroy the life you once had in favor of preserving this one. You deserve it as much as I did.”

“You didn’t deserve it,” Will whispers defiantly, though relief continues to pour through his perforations.

Hannibal looks towards the motel as though lost in thought. But when his attention returns, it fixes on Will absolutely. “First comes complicity,” he is reminded.

-

Hannibal rests an elbow against the rim of the tub, sliding a friction of fingers against the hollow of his neck. His hair is wet with the water he’s scooped over his head, beads of bathwater rolling down his nose and across his cheeks. The blood shucks off into pink rivulets, coloring the water he sits in. As his wrist rolls beneath the meniscus, rising out to watch the steam lift from his skin, Will sits on the edge of the toilet seat, running his hands through his hair.

“It feels… good,” Will acknowledges from his post beside the tub, finally speaking. “To… kill. Without having to do any of it.”

Hannibal looks over, agreeing. “You can become me during the storm. And shed me before you have to observe the aftermath.”

He laughs. “This is the aftermath,” Will appreciates grimly. “Whether I’m you or not, it looks the same.”

“Maybe not,” the older muses, rubbing his forearms of their mess. “You’ve never stayed long enough to see what I see.”

Will finally picks his gaze up from off the floor and looks at Hannibal wonderingly. “And what do you see?” he asks.

“I see somebody who wants the monster to lavish him, rather than ravish him.”

Will narrows his eyes, getting up from the toilet. He sinks down in front of the bathtub, knees falling to the damp tiles below. He studies Hannibal’s expression, darting over each miniscule turn of the muscle. “Maybe both,” he admits lowly. “Maybe the only way to live in your opulence is by being destroyed before the implications settle.” He rests both his arms across the white edge.

“I do believe the implications _have_ settled,” Hannibal remarks, scratching at the caked gore on his outer wrist. “Like dust. All over your tongue. It seems to be destroying your taste; perhaps you could give washing off a chance, too.”

Watching a stream of water travel down the older’s arm, Will swallows. “It just rolls off people like you,” he insults.

“But not quite for you,” Hannibal answers, “Nor does it quite settle in. You are unique- and there are no people like you.”

“And that… comforts you?”

“It excites me. The implications.”

“And you can taste just fine,” Will murmurs to himself.

Hannibal reaches an arm from the bath, a human sieve that sends water sloshing over the edge. He grabs Will’s hand, pulling it to his mouth. “Because I know what tastes fine,” he responds, taking the thin flesh of the other’s middle finger between his teeth and grating at it delicately. “And what tastes even finer in the aftermath. Like a well-considered wine pairing, that metallic tinge is, to you.”

“If violence brings out the sweetest tones in me, then…” Will trails off, letting his other hand slip beneath the surface of bathwater. “What does that say about who I am?”

Hannibal gives him a contrary look, placing his bottom row of teeth against interdigital folds of Will’s fingers and licking up the length of his pointer. “Or,” he reasons, “What does that say about my taste?”

This is one of the few answers that Will knows the answer to.

“Goodnight, Hannibal,” he says gently, drawing his hand back and picking himself up from the edge of the tub.

-

Will lies in the darkness, blinking himself in and out of a delicately balanced sleep state. The white, cotton comforter pulled up to his neck is darkened by night in the motel room, and half-asleep, his mind is fooled into thinking it’s the deep, silky blue of Hannibal’s guest room. As he drifts off, he’s surprised to find comfort in the idea that he’s back in the other’s house.

Through the half-dreams clinging to his eyelashes, Will blinks once. Again. There’s a figure standing in the bathroom doorway, its hands in claws at its sides and eyes slashing, full of silver, through the darkness.

“Hannibal,” he speaks to himself, shaking his mind awake. The figure seems to stir at hearing its own name, fingers flexing and shoulders angling forward. Each of his fingernails seem to catch the light as they stretch.

A shaking breath holds itself against Will’s cheeks. He lets it free, the words escaping with it. “Do it,” he demands.

There doesn’t need to be a second instruction. Hannibal advances towards the bed, long strides that carry him to Will’s side, where he hoists one leg over the edge and sinks into the mattress. His knees plant firmly on either end of Will’s torso. With certainty, he wraps both of hands around Will’s neck, right thumb firmly pressing down on the boy’s jugular.

Will jerks upward as though to break away; they meet somewhere in the middle of submission and resistance, Hannibal’s mouth locking onto Will’s and driving him back down onto the bed.

He makes a strangled noise to get Hannibal to loosen his grip, but not before a serpent of fingers are pressed into his neck, constricting his access to oxygen. He chokes for a minute, observing the black stars that queue up in his vision.

When the hands uncurl and the spots clear from his mind, Will returns sharply to himself. Then the honied influx of air (met by the wetness of Hannibal’s tongue down his throat) fill him with a sudden, dizzying arousal that turns him just as lightheaded. Will gives a sharp moan, the sound cleaved in half by a desperate inhale, and he is pushed into the sheets.

“No suit,” he points out hoarsely. His legs draw up until both knees meet Hannibal’s bare hips, squeezing the soft sides of the killer’s middle. He fights with all of his upper body strength to heave himself forward, succeeding and clanging collar bones with the other.

When Will blinks, his eyelashes scratching along the skin of Hannibal’s cheek, the older shudders. “I did not plan this killing,” he responds in a labored voice. Forcefully, he grabs Will from under the chin and forces him back down, exposing the length of the boy’s neck to his mouth.

Hunger spreads from one eye to the next, so intense in its pang that his fingers turn rough as he holds the younger’s neckline exposed. Hannibal rolls the weight of his body along the stiffness in Will’s boxers, opening his mouth to teethe against the sensitive flesh of the throat. His other hand holds the boy down, one steady, veined hand on the male’s shoulder to keep him restrained against the mattress. Perhaps it’s excessive- the sucking seems enough to immobilize the other. Hannibal loosens the vigor of his musculature curtailment and simply permits the flushed looseness of Will’s body to take charge. He would always defer to it, if the male’s body was eternally suspended in this state.

“Is this… recklessness?” Hannibal hears Will pose through lax lips, almost too quietly to be caught.

Each movement of Hannibal takes Will a moment of delay to process; the removal of the clawing hand, the way it snakes around his waist, when a finger ends up at the bottom edge of his boxers and traces the strip of fabric to his inner thigh. “Would you rather it was planned?” Hannibal wonders back.

When Will gazes above and finds Hannibal’s face looking back down at him, lips pursed over an affect that isn’t quite masked, he feels something sink to the pit of his belly; a taste that had grown old in his throat long ago. Wearing this expression, it’s unthinkable to claim that Hannibal feels nothing. It seems suddenly cruel to think that there is nothing he could want, and in that, nothing he could lose in the wanting.

Will stutters for breath as one of Hannibal’s fingers slopes along the point where his thighs meet, feathering just high enough to brush the shape of his balls. “Did you plan to be merciful about it?” It comes out like a whine, squeezing his legs together to trap Hannibal’s hand between them, just a moment too late to succeed.

“Not at all,” Hannibal answers, angling his gaze so that it sweeps from his collars to his toenails, slowing to follow a flat-handed stroke of his palm across Will’s hips. He glides over the front of Will’s boxers, smoothing his erection through the gray cotton. “But circumstances change.”

“Do you remember what you said?”

Hannibal tilts his head, looking as though emboldened on Will’s behalf, merely for being spoken back to.

“About taste,” Will clarifies.

“What did I say?” Hannibal asks, teeth playful and sharp. He drags them along Will’s sternum, shifting continually down to follow the path of his eyes.

Will breathes in, twisting his body outward to give it to the other, offering each curve of bone in its convex fashion. “You said… that you wanted to taste me. To compare me to the aftermath.”

There’s a moment of silence. “Did I say that?” Hannibal plays, dripping his lips down the length of Will’s abdomen, saliva melting at the juncture of his hips. “Because, Will, my love, I think you _are_ the aftermath.”

He buries his nose into the base of Will’s balls and then runs the tip of his tongue along the swell in Will’s boxers, painting the outline of Will’s cock against the fabric with the wetness of his mouth.

Will arches his body back and hefts his hips up, meeting the heat of Hannibal’s mouth, which sucks cruelly against his clothed erection until he cries out for more. The older rips the garment off and follows by licking along his cock with the length of his tongue and then swallowing him down his throat.

Hannibal’s inner mouth surrounds him, gilding Will in fitful desire. His hands claw at the mattress, trying to hold himself steady at the same time as they flatten into palms, with which he can thrust himself into the older’s mouth.

“This _is_ a suit,” Will groans from above, twisting at the way Hannibal’s hands meet the inside of his thighs and glidingly open them wider. “For me.”

He can’t tell if Hannibal is nodding or bobbing his head for blow job. The latter feels good. The former feels _good._

Shaking out a strained breath, Will fucks himself into the man’s mouth, Hannibal’s name tumbling over the bumps on his tongue. He fills his lungs, rolls his hips, and tries again. “Hannibal,” he repeats, struggling. “Stop.”

Immediately, Hannibal goes rigid with the younger swallowed into his cheek, the flat of his tongue on the underside of Will’s cock. He opens his eyes and rolls them up to examine Will’s, arbitrating the seriousness of the other’s expression. He finds power, cold, severe, through the mist of red lust splattered across Will’s skin tone.

“Stop,” Will commands him.

Hannibal slowly glides his mouth off Will’s shaft, lips puckering bitterly as they pop off his head. It’s still too close for comfort, but he at least has the decency to wait until his mouth is off before he clenches his teeth in frustration. His eyes are still leering at Will from below, a concealed wildness that makes him think Hannibal will try to cannibalize all of him in this moment, if he doesn’t offer up a piece of himself willingly.

When Hannibal remains with his elbows pressed to the bed, watching the younger with strangely angry eyes, Will almost lets a callous laugh slip out.

Instead, he matches the gaze, letting the older know he has been scrutinized. “Like I said, Hannibal,” Will bids, content to hold this somehow-procured seat of power a moment longer, “I’m not your keeper. I can’t stop you from doing reckless things.”

“Cruel boy,” Hannibal admires, a snarl curling towards the back of his teeth. “Permitting me to have what I want in the way I don’t want it.”

Will turns his head, fixing his attention. He squints in wonder at the endgame. “Do you expect me to believe that you- what, that you _love_ me?”

And the most surprising thing happens: Hannibal turns his eyes away. “I intend it,” he mumbles.

“To ravish,” Will speaks slowly, running one hand down his leg and rubbing his kneecap, “Is not to love. However natural that feels to you.”

A flash of eyes heat the dampness between them. “It was particularly difficult not to kill Molly, knowing that you loved her.” Hannibal watches on, waiting to gauge a reaction.

Will sighs and reaches out, touching his fingertips to male’s cheekbone. “You did kill Molly,” he disagrees, face hardened. “You ravished her from me- or. Ravished me of her. Didn’t you?”

“You put up your arms and asked me to disrobe you of that suit long ago,” Hannibal responds, sweeping Will’s bare chest with his vision. “I suspect what you were forced to wear around her was stifling. Couldn’t even take it off to sleep. Doesn’t it feel better, now? To be naked.” Clicking his tongue, he slips his hand under the back of Will’s knee joint, stroking the underside of the boy’s thigh. “And is it love if you can take it off and be rendered naked?”

“Have _you_ ever been naked?” Will questions.

“I am,” Hannibal promises.

Will finally permits his vision to leap erratically over the older’s body, the strange changes in coloration and the lean-and-soft groupings of flesh. He clears his throat. “The paradox of you, Hannibal, is that you cannot both be naked _and_ covered in blood. Who you are at your core is who you become, in the presence of the right elements.”

A hand that Will had nearly forgotten the feeling of comes back to wrap around his neck. This time, there is no force to it. Only a single thumb pressing surgically against his pulse. “On the contrary, Will, you are perfectly intact and yet I consider myself to be soaked in you. Perhaps you are the elements you speak of.”

Will resists the urge to tear the hand away. “When was the last time you thought about killing me?”

“A moment ago,” Hannibal asserts, curling his fingers up to stroke the underside of Will’s neck, “When you rejected me. And now. Are you still rejecting me?”

Will breaks contact with Hannibal, looks down. Looks further down. Then looks back up. “No,” he answers. “I’m not.”

Like an unfurling shadow, the body of Hannibal rises up from the mattress, towering over Will until it spills all around him, drenching the gold of his skin in its dark matrix. Will clears his mind, focusing, and is rewarded when the creature transforms from monster to man. Just hot, slick skin against his. He shivers only because a bead of sweat has rolled from the end of Hannibal’s hair and dripped onto his neck.

Hannibal’s arms wrap around him, eliminating the chill. His chest is warm where Will is pulled into it, a furnace manually fed from within. He can feel the rapidity of Hannibal’s heartbeat thrumming even from his own chest.

Will draws back for a kiss, coaxing them both against the pillow. Hannibal’s hand trails lazily around the pattern of Will’s face as they share tongues, swirling his fingers across the boy’s features. Without realizing he’s doing it, Will mimics the gesture. When his fingertip finds a wetness marbled down the side Hannibal’s cheek, he cannot say for certain that it’s just more sweat.

With his tongue sliding softly along Will’s, Hannibal nurses the taste of the younger as he draws back slightly, eyes jumping unpredictably (precisely) along each stretch of detail on Will’s face. “It was our neighbor,” he confides.

Will’s eyes open slowly, meeting the intent gaze waiting for him there.

He narrows his eyes as he processes. “Mr. Levy? With the cats?”

Nodding, Hannibal’s spare hand finds Will’s beneath the comforter and tangles them together. “Fortunate for us. When the cats go looking for him, I imagine they’ll be pleased with what they find.”

“And… when somebody else finds him?”

“Then they will come looking for us.”

Pressing his eyes closed, Will squeezes his hand into a fist as he forces himself to accept the reality of it. “Fuck, Hannibal,” he complains, securing himself still-further against the wall of the older’s anatomy. Hannibal inhales suddenly at the gesture.

“I will take you to safety, Will,” Hannibal rumbles against him, running a set of pointed fingers through Will’s hair. “I know it seems as though we can’t outrun this. But I can surprise you.”

“You do surprise me,” he murmurs, facing towards the ceiling. “You take on the guise of a statue up until the moment… well, up until the moment that you don’t. You become fluid when you need to. Manipulate yourself in ways I did not know how to expect.”

Hannibal opens his mouth to speak. The crescent-like gleam in Will’s eyes and the words in his mouth transmit passionate intrigue. But the voice itself sounds as though Will quakes with disgust at him. Before he can voice his response, Will crashes his lips to Hannibal’s mouth, snaking his hand around to squeeze the male’s glutes.

When Will backs up for air, Hannibal tries to get the words out again, and is once more intercepted by Will’s tongue. This time, he places both hands on Will’s shoulders and forces him away from his face, making to address the topic, but is sliced down the middle when Will pants a heavy “shut up” in his face.

Hannibal hesitates in stunned annoyance, teeth grating for only a second until he can make another attempt. “If you would just-”

“Shut up,” Will restates. “Shut up, Hannibal. I want to be fucked.”

Anyone. Anyone else would have been dead.

But Will was correct. The firmness of Hannibal’s principles, the bedrock on which it’s all supported, crumbles the second Will presses his bare heels to the structure. And he knows that he can only give Will what we wants.

“How?” he snarls back.

“You’ve fucked me over enough, it shouldn’t be _that_ hard to make it good for me too,” Will responds in a tone so harsh it makes Hannibal’s joints flare with action. Then the hot flush trickles down to the rest of his body; the burn of anger becomes a thick layer of sexualized embarrassment, and it’s… the implications that excite him. In that Will could speak to him however he desired, and Hannibal would allow him to.

“You’d do well to be careful with your tongue.” He tightens a hand around the nape of Will’s neck and angles his head up so that they are level at the height of their eyes. “Or I may use mine to spoon out the rest of you.”

A punctuated boldness cracks along Will’s countenance. “I intend it,” he flirts.

Hannibal sits up suddenly, using the motion to twist Will’s hair and push him face-down into the bed. “Did you ever feel like you knew me?” he wonders idly, guiding Will out of the position he’d just forced him into. The male plants his knees and palms into the mattress, rising up on all fours and looking behind him to face the man.

“I felt like I was you,” he voices thickly in a way that is anything but idle. “But only because I felt like you were me.”

One of Hannibal’s hands slips between his legs, wrapping around his length and stroking delicately at it until he becomes hard again. Will turns away, dropping down to his elbows. His hips stay raised up in the air.

“Did you enjoy being me?” the voice wonders from above.

“No.”

The answer is immediate. Hannibal responds without protest by lowering his lips to the pucker of Will’s asshole, parting to lick across the constricted muscle, tongue warm and slick against his opening.

“But, I…” he breathes out, leaning into the heat of Hannibal’s mouth. The hand around his cock jerks him steadily, pulling Will’s pelvis back each time he travels down the shaft and pressing him harder against his tongue. “I enjoyed… feeling like you were me. As though we were doorways, and I had just… wandered so deep that we had become the same place.”

Hannibal makes a sound against him. Before Will can discern the meaning of the gentle hum, Hannibal flicks out his tongue and begins fucking into him, undoing him. He hastens the thrust of Will’s cock in his fist, opening him up with the rhythmic striping of his tongue.

A low moan spills from Will’s lips. “Hannibal,” he keens, crossing his arms and resting his head on them. He’s made a weak attempt to signal the older to stop, but it arrives too late and too inaudible. Will grabs the flesh of his own wrist between his teeth and comes into Hannibal’s hand, short spurts of semen milked out of him by the older’s slowing pumps. He tightens the muscles of his butt, dragging Hannibal’s tongue against himself until he can’t take it and quivers at the overstimulation.

Will drops limply onto the bed, melting into himself.

He runs his eyes over his arms, rolling out to lay his chin on the sturdiness of their bones. “You spoiled me,” he accuses blissfully, closing his eyes. “I thought I asked you to fuck me.”

A palm slides up his spine, savoring the skin that stretches from his lower back to the stem of his neck. “You will be, you selfish boy,” Hannibal responds, the threating body of his tone drained only by the love that steams from it.

Without the expense of much strength, Hannibal slips his hands underneath Will’s chest and rolls him over, laying his back to the mattress. The younger shields his mouth with his arm, eyes sleepy from spent pleasure. When Hannibal draws the obscuring limb away, he finds the wetness of drool clinging to his palm. He grasps the boy’s wrist and rubs his fingers along the coating of saliva, then curls his free hand onto the side of Will’s face and leans down to kiss him.

Supple and airy, Will parts his lips to feel Hannibal’s tongue run through his mouth, keening quietly at the way warmth travels through his belly, rippling against the nerves that had gone numb after the orgasm. Now they light with twice the velocity. It feels more akin to a luminescence filling him, rather than a rush of heat forming around him.

The roughness that follows is not at all what Hannibal’s timbre had threatened- there is none. Hannibal hitches his hips upward and presses into him slowly, nursing this penetration to the mutual slide of their tongues. Will’s breath hitches when the older thrusts unexpectedly deeper, stretching him past that of the shallow licks that primed him. On the whole, it hurts far less than he wants it to. It inundates him with a sensation that makes his head dizzy and limbs feeble.

“Cruel,” he speaks murmuringly, lips moving against the other’s open mouth. “To make me get what I want in the way I don’t want it.”

Hannibal seizes both of Will’s wrists and slides them above his head, using the leverage to rise up and thrust into him with earnest. “Do you believe I don’t love you?” he asks in a soft tone against Will’s ear, as though he doesn’t want even the walls absorbing the words. He fucks Will slowly, but the rhythm and the assured pressure against his prostate build up until the male is writhing underneath him.

“Will you-” he gasps, arching his spine back. He leans into Hannibal and a flurry of pleasurable sparks scatter through him. “Will you go faster?”

Angling the musculature of his back, Hannibal thrusts into Will, dipping his head to bring his voice back to Will’s ear. “No,” he denies, dragging a hungered hand across Will’s chest. “I want you to come again before I do.” His palm cups the boy’s shoulder, smoothing around to his collars, dripping the tips of his fingers along the indent of his upper ribs.

Will swallows. “I can’t,” he protests, voice hoarse with strain.

“You can,” the cannibal promises. “You will.”

Hannibal races his hand down Will’s chest, running it flat across his front. His touch teases Will’s hips, caressing the sensitive flesh of his inner thighs with his knuckles. He draws his hand across Will’s cock, which has again become obstinately swollen against his stomach. The younger’s body quakes at the contact; Hannibal spits into his palm to ease the chafing. When his hand returns to fist Will inside of it, the younger contorts in confliction, chasing the pleasure while recoiling from the soreness.

“Be insatiable, Will,” the male instructs, timing his motions into a singular action. “Don’t let anybody appease you.”

His chest heaves, hysterically losing himself to the desperation. He doesn’t try to pay attention to the sensations anymore; he’s so close to the edge that he’s just frantic to reach it. He suppresses the violent objection of his body and when he breaks through it, muscles contracting wildly and a piteous amount of come wrenched from him, he is utterly lost to himself.

Will cries out, grabbing Hannibal by the hips and pulling the cock out of him, saving himself from the torturous stimulation against his prostate.

More invertebrate than human, he rolls across the bed and shifts onto his stomach, crawling underneath Hannibal’s suspended body. His arms embrace around Hannibal’s hips and it pulls the man’s knees out from under him, dragging him into the sheets.

His wraps his mouth around Hannibal, swirling his tongue across the older’s length and etching it up and down. His cheeks hollow, sucking harshly without pausing. Even when his lung pound at him for breath, he refuses to stop. Hannibal is dragged to a sudden climax, hips shaking and voice rematerializing as muddled sound.

Will doesn’t slowly nurture the rhythm of Hannibal’s release. He demands it over, taking it. It drips from his lips when he pulls them back, slack.

Hannibal stretches his body out, reeling from the nature of the half-loss. It’s hardly a moment before he recovers, turning around to grab Will by the corner of his mouth, his thumb a hook in the boy’s lips. “You are not merciful,” he growls, brimming with passion. “You’re ruder than I am.”

Will’s eyes are defiant even while his body is too exhausted to move, chest ballooning. He sustains the vicious eye contact until he has to exhale sharply and lay his head down. He pants heavily against the bed, wiping his mouth of the stickiness around it. The salty tang of semen clings to his taste.

Through the heaviness of his lashes, Will manages to look Hannibal up and down, finding his own come spread along the man’s stomach and chest. Hannibal’s eyes follow Will’s, looking down at himself. “See?” he says. “It doesn’t roll off me.”

Will inhales, rubbing his eyes forcefully with the hard bones of his knuckles. He wears an expression of annoyance when he shoves his fist over them. But when they’re uncovered, the male is looking off to the side, corners welled up with wetness. “Not me either,” he acknowledges quietly, looking as though he’s in disbelief to be crying.

“Hannibal,” he murmurs, touching his gaze back to the older. “They’re going to kill us.”

Hannibal rearranges himself, changing his position so he can lie down next to Will on the opposite end of the bed. He lifts an elbow, cupping the side of Will’s face and stroking his cheek under his thumb. Will closes his eyes, becomes some cat or a child, cared for by a person who would willing end his life with a single rough press. “I will protect us,” he promises, “As I did before.”

“We didn’t leave a trace before.”

“You didn’t leave a trace,” Hannibal reminds him. “I did.”

“Same thing,” he undertones.

Will’s eyes flutter shut. The delicate brush of Hannibal’s fingers across his face calms him, settling him into the tangled comforter. He nestles his head into it, acclimating to the awkward, pillowless angle he’s curled up in.

He’s sure that Hannibal is going to protest when he hears the older clear his throat. Hannibal, who would tear the blankets off and sleep on the naked mattress if there were no spare sheets to replace the ones they spent. Will doesn’t care- he still wakes up in waterfalls most nights. Hannibal cares. But instead, what he says is, “Can I get you anything, Will?”

Will rolls his eyes open, nodding. “Water?”

Mostly, he asks just to arch his neck and watch as Hannibal rises from the bed, walks across the room, and fills up a small glass in the bathroom sink. This man, who slings the power of an omnipresence that Will was sure would kill him, using his authority to bring another man a glass of water after sex.

How terrible it is. To care about being caught.

When Hannibal returns, Will offers his gratitude as he takes the glass between his hands and gulps the water down, its coldness restructuring his dry throat. Hannibal smooths his hand along Will’s shoulder, taking the empty cup from him and setting it on the side table. “Anything else?”

Will shakes his head. “Could this have gone differently?” he poses shakily, folding into the temptation of his own exhaustion. Sleep is warm and soothing against his chest.

There is a long stretch of silence. The word _sustainability_ chases through Hannibal’s head a dozen times before he pulls himself back onto the bed and fits himself along the back of Will’s body. His hand remains on the male’s shoulder, comforting him.

“I don’t think so,” he finally answers in a hush, the sound resonating through the chamber of Will’s half-consciousness. “And I wouldn’t have wanted it to.”

Will doesn’t respond. He fades out, descending level by level into sleep. His mind goes first, quieting its activity. Then the warmth of Hannibal’s flesh to his back. Then even the pressing fear that strikes his heart into fits.

His circuit is completed, he thinks, without having the mindfulness to think.

And finally he knows that he understands Hannibal. That for both of them, each additional day is a hand-delivered gift; every day that passes marks another circadian cycle that was meant to have already been extinguished.

This is the end of him, Will realizes. It’s holistic in the way that it surrounds his body and owns him. But he, himself, is also whole- existing inside of that canopy.

-

In the morning, they pull their meager possessions together and head out, leaving the key cards on the table by the bed. For lack of a better storage option, Hannibal’s bloody clothing gets folded into the suitcase, replaced by the fresh outfit he now wears. The rim of the bathtub drain sports not even the thinnest flecks of blood. They are okay for now.

But even as Hannibal drives steadily further from their point of origin, Will feels as though he’s being pursued. He fidgets in his seat, uncomfortable still, when Hannibal rolls casually through the next steps: stop to fill their stomachs (they are both _starving_ ), remind themselves that Will’s phone can’t be traced back to its physical location and that their car is currently not linked to their real names, and then get some gas before turning to the west.

The clear, powdered blueness of the sky brightens the landscape around them as they drive until the ocean comes into view. It’s a swelling, shimmering body that pleasures Will’s eyes to stare into from over the barrier of the seawall. They park in a metered spot overlooking the beach, Hannibal in his trimmed, light-gray chemise and Will in the clothes he wore yesterday. His bare arms are warm under the dome of the sun.

Hannibal rests his hand on the younger’s shoulder as he steps up onto the elevated barrier. “You have nothing to fear for,” the male speaks softly to him, his words swept off by the wind that tears at Will’s displaced, outgrown curls. “You will have all of this. Or the version of this that you wish to have.”

These vibrantly illuminated images fill before him: families with technicolored umbrellas planted in the sand, with dogs and children filling the space between coolers. The way that grains of sand and rocks are gulped up and spit back by the coastal waves. Chilled winds that rise off the tides and make people hug their arms closer to their chest. These, for him?

“I wish to eat,” he avoids.

They end up in a diner across the street, a red-and-chrome garish box wedged between a laundry mat and a bakery smelling of dough risen to bread. They sit at a small table angled as though it were a diamond instead of a square, Hannibal forking at a salad and Will trying to find a way to eat a hamburger in a way that won’t completely repulse or arouse the other. He’s failing, he just doesn’t know in which direction.

Other customers surround them. Many are in cushioned booths along the perimeter of the room, guzzling at soft drinks and talking over the newspaper. Although the two of them aren’t genuinely isolated in this middle section, being in the center of the room makes him feel anxious. Watched. Even the men with their backs turned on the bar-like hightop stools make him nervous. The aproned staff workers bang quickly through the swinging doors, and another bead of sweat slips down his forehead each time he hears the sound.

“Will,” he finally hears, drawing his attention back to Hannibal. The older is looking towards him with concern, cutlery stopped mid-activity. “Do you want to leave?”

A cloud rolls over the sun, graying the interior of the diner. “N- no,” he distractedly answers, looking back down at the burger in his hands. He takes a delicate bite out of it, turning his eyes to the periphery, although he can still feel Hannibal watching him with apprehension.

In a flash of color, Hannibal extends his hand and places it over Will’s. The gesture fills him with a relief that seems to shake out of him. He drops his meal and twists his hand around, clutching back. The intersection of their matched pressure quiets his nerves; when he squeezes, Hannibal meets him with an even harder grasp.

So when the waitress comes through, crashing against the swinging door, he doesn’t jump. He turns his eyes up to face her as she carries a short-loin steak to one of the booths, her serving tray poised stylishly on the crook of her arm.

Will snaps his eyes back to Hannibal, the blueness circling with disquiet. “I believe you,” he says quickly, leaning forward when Hannibal cocks his head in silent question. “You said you loved me? Well, I felt it. Right before I fell asleep. I believe you. This is the only version of this that I would ever want.”

He can’t read Hannibal’s expression. He closes his eyes, locks it into his memory. It is sent to a place in his brain where it cannot be unearthed, but even still, it makes his heart hurt to have.

Then he jumps to his feet and pounces; his left elbow smashes down on the waitress’ serving tray as his right hand snatches the steak knife from off it, throwing the server nearly to the floor. She cries out as her knees buckle, but Will grabs her by the clothing of her shoulders, steering her until her back meets bar and she tumbles over it.

The man on the closest stool leaps out of his chair, coming at Will with the heaviness of his body and stature to disarm him. The male ducks, curling his fingers tightly on the wooden hilt of the blade and slashing at the male’s leg. He cuts a puncture to the thigh, enough to send the man crippling against the elevated chair, and then uses the opening to slash into the fleshy excess of his middle.

The male groans, and at the first sign of blood, somebody screams. Will jerks around, knife raised at the level of his collars and pointed out in warning. A handful of people have spooked out of their booths, standing with their feet poised towards the exit. A teenager huddles into the corner of his table, hiding behind his cap. “Don’t move,” he orders loudly. A woman hesitates, then makes an impulsive lunge for the door.

Will rushes between her and the exit, intercepting her with a punch from the blunt end of his knife. He grabs her from under the armpits and forces her onto the ground, where he lifts his leg and cracks the heel of his boot against the woman’s ribs, immobilizing her. There are more cries, screams for help, cell phones being opened. And all of it just rolls off him.

He whirls around to face the others, adrenaline pounding through him. There is no border, uncrossed, to be seen. He hardly even sees Hannibal, sitting politely at the table, looking on with his eyes hardened in approval. His expression flashes with predatory empathy when he sees Will whip back around again, sights set on a man at the back wall, holding a phone shakily to his ear and frantically pleading into it. Hannibal licks his lips and draws his bottom lip under his teeth. He has never been so supportive of anything in his life.

Berserk, and wild, and violently overcome, Will wrenches his knife into the air and stabs it into the caller’s shoulder, again, and again. Dropping his phone, the brunette shrieks and twists his body away, thrashing against Will for escape.

Will jerks forward and presses his hips against the male’s, restraining him against the wall. His mind goes blank. The world narrows down to his body and the knife being held by it. And the deliverance.

He presses the blade to the male’s lower stomach and then rips it upward, severing the flesh of his chest. Gore and his relief flood him, drenching him, quieting the screaming. He loses himself in the liberation of it; returns to the same wound and drives his knife deeper in, yanking it up. An abdominal artery sprays him, painting his face and shirt in splotches of red. He raises his arm again, crying out softly in the senselessness of the feeling that owns him.

Suddenly, an arm wraps around his mouth, pulling him away from the body. Another palm wraps around him, restraint applied heavily to the flat of his chest. The force drives Will into Hannibal’s sturdy front, where he is held steady, cherished, before the older snatches the knife from his hand and forcibly pushes him back.

Will watches from a few steps behind as Hannibal grabs the man by the throat and drags him up the wall, separating the floor from his feet. He pivots the knife in his hand and corrects the immature work of Will’s perforation, tearing apart the skin tissue that was left stubbornly clinging to itself. Hannibal reaches a hand inside the wound and rips out the accordion of the man’s small intestine, sections of its length pulpy and torn from Will’s erratic mutilation.

“I apologize.” Hannibal exhales vehemently, turning around to face the other. “When I saw you, I couldn’t control myself.” He roots around until he finds something in Will’s gaze that sticks; the male looks sobered, his eyes soft and wide.

“Is this… sticking around long enough after the hunt?”

Hannibal tilts his head, waiting. It takes a moment before Will realizes the knife is being held out to him. He takes it, looks around. The diner has emptied out.

“Are you pleased with the aftermath?” Hannibal asks. He steps forward, looks Will up from the balls of his feet to the last curl on his head, and then places the entrails around Will’s neck like jewelry, crowning him.

Will jerks his attention towards the door when he hears police sirens, two cars squealing to a stop outside the restaurant.

“What do we do, Hannibal?” he asks breathlessly.

Hannibal looks over at him, this boy dressed in the gore of his own unmaking. A temperate red bathwater that has been shared among them; never cut from them. But there are still enough veins between the two of them. Enough that they will have their making.

Hannibal knows this.

“Whatever they tell you,” he commands, “Do not drop your weapon.”

**Author's Note:**

> hmu with any annoying errors. c: I only edited it through once.


End file.
